


Lup Flips Off Wonderland

by veritashopian



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Aggressive positivity, Alcohol, Feelings, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Overcoming Trauma, Post canon, Wonderland, after Story and Song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 04:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16401677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veritashopian/pseuds/veritashopian
Summary: For the first time in nearly two decades, a resident of the Felicity Wilds takes a hesitant step into this clearing.Perched on a high branch of a wide, tall tree, a single black bird watches in silence.“You wanna torch it all, is that it? We don’t like the place so we’ll burn it down so we don’t have to look at it? I thought we were past that kiddie shit.”





	Lup Flips Off Wonderland

There’s a grassy clearing out beyond the Felicity Wilds. No one knows if it has a name, but everyone knows what it used to be. The dark magic that once permeated the air around this place like a malevolent shroud has weakened over the course of many years. Its wake is an undertone so subtle that only those skilled in the arcane can detect it anymore, and only if they pay very close attention.

As night falls over the Wilds, the forest awakens. The frogs croak out a gravelly backdrop of white noise, punctuated by the snap of twigs and the rustle of leaves as the forest’s nocturnal creatures begin their rounds. Winter will be on them soon, and they have a lot of foraging to do before the first snowfall.

A young doe pokes her head from the tree line and examines the expanse of the clearing. Her tail twitches but stills when she sees no danger. For the first time in nearly two decades, a resident of the Felicity Wilds takes a hesitant step into this clearing.

Perched on a high branch of a wide, tall tree, a single black bird watches in silence.

The relative quiet of the clearing is disrupted by a sharp rip, and a hole opens up mid-air above the center of the clearing. A figure wrapped in a black cloak steps through the opening and into the clear night air, closing the portal behind her with her scythe.

The doe’s tail raises in alarm, and she bolts back into the forest.

Lup, skeletal and grim, looks around her. This isn’t her first glimpse of this awful place, but it is the first time she’s been able to stomach standing here in her own form. She closes her eyes and wills her flesh and skin into existence, and then it’s just her. Just Lup, standing in a place that carries so many hurtful memories.

She’s only been in the clearing for a few minutes, feeling but not processing, when Lup hears an out of place noise. It’s not a tear, more like a pop, and all of a sudden her brother stumbles into view right beside her in his purple flannel pajamas. Of course.

Lup scowls. “You didn’t have to come.”

“Horseshit.” Taako conjures a thick blanket- more purple plaid, seriously? How the hell are they related?- and spreads it across the ground with a lazy flick of his wrists. “Come on dear, sit. It’s Twin Time.”

Lup gingerly lowers herself to the ground and Taako joins her soon after, laying on his back to look at the stars with his arms crossed behind his head. Lup remains upright, pulling one leg to her chest and resting her chin on her knee.

“I guess I should ask how the fuck you even knew what I was doing,” she begins.

“Please, as if Krav wouldn’t tell me about your dumb watch-bird stunt.” Taako blows a kiss to the raven in the tree. It caws back in what is clearly ravenspeak for ‘fuck off.’ “I’m surprised at you, Lulu. I figured you of all people would want to have some sort of kumbaya moment with the whole crew once this stink hole became bearable again.”

“It’s never going to be bearable,” Lup snaps coldly. “They- Taako, this isn’t about the bad lich mojo. You can’t just- just sit there and act like it never happened.”

Taako snorts. “Fuckin’ watch me.” He sits up suddenly, gesturing into the darkness around them. “I can picture it now; You’ll set up the barbecue here in the middle so Merle doesn’t lose his shit over the trees, Magnus can cover the seating- have you seen that round table-bench combo bullshit he’s been working on?”

Lup frowns, shaking her head. “Taako.”

“It’s hideous but functional as hell and we can probably fit the whole Bee-Oh-Bee in here if we squeeze in close. Oh, Avi can play bartender, natch. We tried Pringles at the last shindig, but I’d like to actually remember this one so he can be in charge of snacks.”

“Taako!”

“Oh, don’t worry Lulu! I’ll be helping from the sidelines. Somebody has to supervise, after all!”

“Taako, we are not going to have a fucking Sunday picnic in Wonderland!” Lup yells.

Taako tsks at her and shakes his head. “Babe, I am one hundo percent picking up what you’re laying down, but that is _so_ not what I’m planning here.”

“Sure sounds like it to me.”

“Then what do you want from me?” Taako demands. She knows him well enough to know that he’s baiting her, and every part of her wants to avoid this conversation but- “You wanna torch it all, is that it? We don’t like the place so we’ll burn it down so we don’t have to look at it? I thought we were past that kiddie shit.”

Lup is shaking with fury. “You don’t get it, do you? You- you got torn to pieces in there and I couldn’t fucking _do anything_ about it! You have no idea how much shit I went through in there! If you hadn’t made it out I would have unraveled, Taako! No more, game over, my mind would have _destroyed_ itself without you!”

Her shout echoes in the clearing, the forest suddenly silent with the power of her rage. Lup doesn't know when she got to her feet, or when her boots caught fire and scorched her brother’s blanket, but that’s where they are now and it’s out there, her whole deal with this stupid place is out there for anyone to hear.

“You’re my _heart,”_ she whispers. “They almost took you from me. And I almost let them.”

Taako watches her passively. He casts a quick cantrip to extinguish the small flame, but he doesn’t look away from her. When he finally speaks his voice is softer and lower than she’s heard in decades. “Lup. You think I don’t know how that feels? To not be able to help when you’re in danger?”

Her heart seizes- _the sting of silverpoint, flashes of black fabric, her brother’s voice after eleven years of nothing at all but it’s wrong, all wrong_ \- “That’s not fair, Taako.”

“It is,” he insists. He reaches up and grabs her sleeve, pulling her gently back down to kneel with him. “It’s fair because even if I forgot it for a while, I know what you went through. I’ve felt it every day since Story and Song, and I’ve hated it the whole time.” His breath hitches. “I’ve hated _myself_ for forgetting you.”

Oh shit. Lup clamps down on the sudden heat behind her eyelids, pursing her lips. If Taako gets sappy, she’s going to to get sappy and that’s never pretty.

Lup grasps his hands, leaning their heads together. “That wasn’t your fault, though.”

“And Wonderland wasn’t yours.” Taako places a gentle hand on the back of her neck and squeezes. “You saved our asses in there, Lulu. That place milked us for every drop of misery we had, and you stopped that. The only regret I have about you killing Edward was that I wasn’t there for the blow by blow.”

“It was rad,” Lup admits with a teary smile. “He didn’t stand a fucking chance.”

“Why did you come here?” Taako whispers, and Lup sighs.

There are a thousand places on a hundred worlds that hold bad memories for the both of them. Their own homeworld cast them aside to fend for themselves, and now it’s gone. But this place, this arena of pointless torment, is the one she hates the most. Taako’s torment was physical harm and fucked up mind games. Lup’s torment was sitting by while her heart struggled to keep breathing.

“I’m stronger than this,” she says, frustrated. “I can’t let the mere memory of this place keep holding me down. I can’t keep panicking every time I hear a bell ring.” She glares at the grass around them, so green that no one could tell by looking how dead and brown it had been for so many years. “I had to come here and face it.”

Taako sighs. He smoothes a hand over her hair and keeps it there, holding her close to his chest. “That’s admirable babe, that really is. But you _did_ this one already, and you kind of crushed it? Lup, there’s nothing to prove. This place sucks several gross kinds of ass but that’s on them, not us. It’s okay that it hurts you. It hurts me, too, but we don’t have to torture ourselves with it. That’s not how we do.”

She lets her brother pull her back down to lay on the blanket, their arms around each other. “You were missing. You were missing for _so long,_ and you were alone. But you’re not alone anymore, and we’re both here. Wonderland didn’t get us; nothing did, and nothing will.”

Tears wet Lup’s cheeks and soak into the collar of Taako’s pajama shirt, and her laughs rings with hysteria. “Hell no it didn’t. We saved the fucking multiverse, Edward and Lydia ain’t shit compared to that.”

Taako chuckles. “Fuck liches. Present company and Barold not included, obviously.”

Her grin turns shit-eating. “Nope. Can confirm, present company and Barold do indeed-“

“ _Okay, touching moment over!”_ Taako rolls away to the other edge of the blanket while Lup laughs her ass off. _“Gross! You’re both gross!”_

Lup looks at her brother, feeling unbearably soft and vulnerable in that moment. “Hey Taako?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you,” she says, and huh. That feels good. She never really got to say it before with the whole Story and Song thing and after that it was just… a given, but it feels right now. “Really Taako, thank you.”

He scoffs, trying to wipe his eyes without her seeing. “If you wanted me to kinkshame y’all, all you had to do was ask.”

“No, I mean. I know what you two did.”

Taako drops his indignant air instantly, adopting an expression of clearly insincere ignorance. “Who two? Did what? It was his idea!”

She smirks. “I would hope so! You’d be quite the hypocrite for telling me not to torch Wonderland after you goofuses collapsed Wave Echo Cave last year.”

“Son of a _bitch_ ,” Taako groans. “Who told you? I had Barry make a blood oath, so I know it wasn’t him.”

“I don’t divulge my sources, brother dear.”

“It was Kravitz, wasn’t it?”

“You said it, not me.”

Taako curses colorfully. It’s so cute that he thought he was the only one to get Krav drunk enough to spill secrets. “That man is so lucky I love him.”

“I don’t want to destroy this place. Wonderland is already gone, and even if they deserved some hellfire the forest sure doesn’t. Maybe we can make it something better instead of tearing it apart.”

“That’s what Taako’s talking about! I’ve got the guest list ready and everything, we were just waiting for the janky miasma to fade enough that the kids won’t have nightmares. Aw fuck, this is gonna be epic!” Taako nearly vibrates out of his skin at the prospect.

Lup raises on eyebrow. “Doing what? I already said we’re not having a picnic.”

“Oh, of course not. That’s way too tame!” Taako grins, a mouthful of teeth shining in the darkness like an overly satisfied cat. “I want a proper fucking _revel._ We’re going to dance on those fuckers’ graves, and we’re going to enjoy every damn second of it.”

Lup looks around the clearing. As the two of them grew up and climbed the ranks of the IPRE, they often talked about going back home once they were rich and famous. They never got the opportunity to laud their happiness over the family that didn’t want them, but Lup surprises herself by realizing that that isn’t what she wants now.

“No barbecue,” she says slowly. “I’ve got a better idea.” She reaches out for Taako’s hands and pulls the two of them to their feet. With a quiet thought and a flick of her fingers, she dispatches her raven with a message. If Taako wants a revel, she’ll give him a revel. They’ll wipe the twin stains of Edward and Lydia right off the map, and she knows just how she wants to do it.

* * *

Barry and Kravitz step through a rift moments later to find the twins wreathed in light and well on their way to being very, very drunk. Dozens of gently glowing fireballs bob around over their heads as they scream at the sky. Each elf has one arm around their twin and one hand clutching a half-empty bottle of fantasy Grey Goose.

“I have a family!” Taako yells as he spots the reapers, waving with his bottle.

“The _best_ damn family in all reality!” Lup agrees. She watches with delight as Taako’s words take form above them and disperse, flying up to join the floating lights.

“Okay? We love you guys too,” Barry says with a laugh. He removes his glasses to examine the trail of light that bubbles up from his lips, looking fascinated. “Babe, what is this? Why are we doing here _?_ ”

Taako runs up and throws his arms around Kravitz. “My boyfriend is hot as hell!”

“My husband is a fuckin’ _stud_ ,” Lup slurs, not far behind. She slides an arm around Barry’s waist and pulls him close, plucking the glasses from his hand to put them back on. “And you’re here to get fucked up and real, real happy, Barold. Let’s do it to it.”

Kravitz stumbles as Taako goes limp in his arms to make the reaper take all of his weight. Ever since Taako talked him into rolling his sleeves up to the elbow, he’s been using every excuse possible to wind up in Kravitz’s arms. “You too, handsome. Think of a wonderful thought and all that good shit. It’s a beautiful night and Taako is halfway reveled out already, it’s your turn.”

Kravitz still looks confused, but Lup can literally see Barry connecting the dots. It makes sense, she thinks, because he was in that awful place with them. He knows how it worked, so he’ll know what she’s made.

Barry hugs her tightly and then turns his face up to the sky and shouts, “My jeans are an indestructible spiritual construct and I’ll never have to buy another pair!” His words jump out of his mouth as as well, bright yellow and orange and pink as they drift up and away, absorbed into the fireballs.

Lup feels the fiery orbs around her flicker and swell, and so she adds more fuel. “I made the smartest guy in the world fall in love with me! Eat _that,_ Ellie Emerick, he’s mine!”

Taako snorts. “I forgot she had a crush on him.”

“ _I_ sure as hell didn’t!”

“Hold on!” Kravitz demands. “What is that coming out of your mouths?”

Taako giggles and boops the reaper’s nose. “It’s the new house special, my dude. It’s ten percent bragging, twenty percent revenge, twenty percent therapy, and twenty-five percent sappy shit!”

“That’s only seventy-five percent,” Barry points out.

“And it’s thirty-five percent shut up and drink, Barold! We’ve got bottles to pop and misery to erase!” Taako conjures another bottle and tosses it over Lup’s head, crowing, “This is the best idea my amazing sister has had in sixty years!”

Lup watches Kravitz. She’ll spell it all out if she has to, but she knows he’ll figure it out soon if the way he’s studying Taako is any indication.

“Joy is a good look on you,” she hears him say. Well, _sees_ him say. It joins the fireball brigade and the clearing grows ever brighter.

“You’re a flatterer and I love it.” Taako kisses him soundly, and no more colored light springs into existence for several moments.

Barry chuckles. “If all they have to do is moon at each other to feed the constructs, this whole place will catch fire.”

He’s right, kind of. Taako plays coy, but he’s as full of sap as Kravitz is and could single handedly run this thing on the sheer force of how powerfully he loves. But these aren’t burning flames, they’re _healing_ flames.

“It won’t hurt the forest,” Lup explains. “The constructs could have been anything, but I liked the idea of a little light out here. And it’s all very on brand, you know?”

Barry kisses her forehead. “Of course.”

“And it was a little tricky figuring out how to block negative energy while letting the positive flow freely, but we got it. The constructs will sponge it up quick and let it out slowly, so we can put in a lot at once without it running out.”

She knows she doesn't have to explain all of that to him the same way she did to Taako- century of scientific research aside, this is all very niche lich magic. So his next question is simply, “So who gets the energy?”

“Oh, it goes straight into the earth.” Lup points up into the branches of the trees, where leaves are turning from oranges and yellows back to green. The boosted vitality of the plant life is a side effect she hadn’t anticipated, but she’s curious to see how it holds up in the long term. “It just cycles through and back to the orbs. I don’t get any of this, and neither will anyone else. You and I will have to pull the energy circuit good and tight before we leave, we don’t want any other magic users getting any ideas and hacking the system.”

Barry hums, watching the energy flow. She knows he’s checking her work out of habit, and it’s sweet. It’s nice that this is her project, something completely spontaneous that’s _hers_ , and she can still count on Barry to have her back. “It’s a great idea,” he says. “We could honestly look at hooking the agriculture industry up with systems like these with a little fine tuning.” He looks over to make sure Taako is still distracting their boss and whispers, “Though maybe not quite the same spell, since it’s _technically_ stillnecrotic magic.”

Lup sighs and leans into Barry’s embrace. “Yeah, let’s not tell Ghost Rider about that part. I just… I wanted to make something good. Something that holds onto joy and shows it to people when they need it to like, remind them that it’s there? Just giving happiness for happiness sake. No traps, no sacrifices, no _taking_. No misery allowed.”

Barry smiles. “The ultimate middle finger to Wonderland, then. I like it! So what are you gonna call it?”

Lup glances over at Taako and Kravitz, all wrapped up in one another and spooling out threads of quiet, iridescent happiness like they’ve got plenty to spare. They look so blissful that she’s surprised they’re not flying.

It’s such a contrast to the history of this place that her head goes light and her heart goes fuzzy, and she is so, so grateful that they’re all still here to see it.

“Thanksgiving,” Lup decides. “I’m gonna call it Thanksgiving.”

**Author's Note:**

> Taako got surfing, I figured Lup deserved a holiday! She talks big but she cares so much about other people that I wanted to give her a chance to show it.


End file.
